Soapbox – Sale Fails Derailed

Post-Christmas sales are a seemingly never-ending black-hole of dodgy stuff no one wants, and they should be banned, writes Aoife Valentine

You would imagine that there is very little wrong with post-Christmas sales. All the stuff you wanted before Christmas at a lower price, while you have a load of vouchers from relatives who don’t really know you that well. It sounds like a winning combination if you’ve never actually experienced sales shopping, but there is everything wrong with these sales, not least of which is the fact that they start on St Stephen’s Day.

Next, your friendly, bland high street clothes store opens its doors at 6am on Stephen’s Day and there is always a queue outside. Opening your shop and forcing people to work at 6am the day after Christmas should be illegal. There is no reason not to wait a few more hours until daylight becomes a thing. Those who were there earlier than that queuing should get themselves lives. It’s not like they’re giving away iPads or anything; all you can buy is the weird clothes no one wanted, in the weird sizes no one is.

By the time 10am rolls around, the latest Irish X Factor reject rolls in to open the Arnotts sale, where people get competitive over the handbags people recoiled at before Christmas, so much so that they named the display on the day, “Handbags at dawn”. Die right now.

The queues to get into Hollister still hadn’t subsided several weeks after Christmas, which is about the saddest thing in the world. There are only a few things in life worth waiting around for, and hoodies which are still overpriced even after they have been marked down in the sale don’t fall into that category. Shopping in the dark must be particularly unpleasant when you can’t move without crashing into another frenzied Celtic Tiger cub with more money than sense.

All that could possibly be forgiven if shops weren’t still throwing up “New lines added!!!” signs in their windows, which are offensive firstly because they’re all lies – it’s just more of the same shit – and secondly because there is really no need for so many exclamation marks. After almost a month of sales, there is almost definitely nothing left that you could or ever should possibly want, at any price. If you weren’t impulse buying it because it’s three quid, you’d most definitely be laughing at the person in the dodgy patterned leggings. Seriously, stop being that person.